The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled against National Taiwan University (NTU) professor emeritus Ho De-fen (賀德芬) after she filed an appeal against the Ministry of Education over the doctorate President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) earned from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
The court said that Ho does not have the legal right to ask the ministry to declassify related documents to enable her to verify the authenticity of Tsai’s doctoral certificate.
The ministry had provided Ho with Tsai’s resume and academic credentials during a court hearing on June 3, which met Ho’s demand, the court said.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
In conjunction with political talk show host and former NTU professor Dennis Peng (彭文正) and Hwan C. Lin (林環牆), a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s Belk College of Business, Ho has since 2019 claimed that Tsai’s doctorate was forged, enabling her to teach at National Chengchi University (NCCU).
In September 2019, Tsai filed a defamation lawsuit against the the three, in which Peng was charged with aggravated libel. Prosecutors declined to indict the other two.
Ho filed the lawsuit against the education ministry after it rejected her request in September last year to provide documents related to Tsai’s time as a visiting associate professor at NCCU in 1984.
The ministry indicated that the documents have been classified and are to be kept confidential until 2049.
The Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法) established a system that does not allow private individuals the right to demand an authority to explain such a decision or why information is classified, the court said in its ruling.
Regarding Ho’s request that the ministry provide her with Tsai’s doctoral dissertation and employment certificate when teaching at NCCU, the court said that the ministry had returned the papers to Tsai and therefore could not hand them to Ho.
Ho’s demand for NT$10 million (US$358,654) in compensation to cover the cost of traveling to the UK, where she hired a lawyer to help her collect information, was also rejected, as Ho could not provide evidence to support the claim or prove any correlation between the two matters, it said.
The court said in its decision that Ho’s demands were unreasonable.
The ruling can be further appealed.
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